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Quantum Computing: From Alice to Bob
Quantum
Computing: From
Alice to Bob

Alice Flarend
Physics Teacher
Bellwood-Antis High School

Bob Hilborn
Associate Executive Officer
American Association of Physics Teachers
 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Alice Flarend and Robert C. Hilborn 2022
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021951706
ISBN 978–0–19–285797–2 (hbk)
ISBN 978–0–19–285798–9 (pbk)
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192857972.001.0001
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Cover image: Buntoon Rodseng/Shutterstock.com.
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
Contents

Preface x
Acknowledgments xiv

1 Introduction 1
1.1 Meet Alice, Bob, and Cardy 1
1.2 What’s the Big Deal about Quantum Computing? 1
1.3 A Brief Preview 3
1.4 How to Use This Book: Encouragement and Coaching 6
FURTHER READING 7

2 Traditional Computing 8
2.1 Traditional Computing versus Quantum Computing 8
2.2 Binary Digits 9
2.3 Logic Gates and Truth Tables 11
CHAPTER SUMMARY 15
FURTHER READING 16

3 Traditional Bits in New Clothing 17

3.1 Quick Review 17
3.2 State Symbols 17
3.3 State Vectors 18
3.4 Gates as Matrices 22
CHAPTER SUMMARY 24
FURTHER READING 24

4 Qubits and Quantum States 25

4.1 What Is a Qubit? 25
4.2 What Is a Quantum State? 26
4.3 Quantum States and Quantum Computers 27
4.4 Quantum States and State Space 28
4.5 Polarized Light 32
vi CONTENTS

4.6 Photons 35
4.7 Ordinary Vectors 36
4.8 Back to Polarized Light 37
4.9 Orthogonality of Two-State Vectors 39
CHAPTER SUMMARY 42
FURTHER READING 43

5 Quantum Measurements 44
5.1 Quantum Measurements: What Are They? 44
5.2 Light Intensity from a Two-Polarizer Setup 46
5.3 State Amplitudes and Probabilities 48
5.4 State Preparation 54
CHAPTER SUMMARY 55
FURTHER READING 56
ONLINE VIDEOS 56

6 Quantum Gates and Quantum Circuits 57

6.1 What is a Quantum Gate? 57
6.2 Single-Qubit Quantum Gates 58
6.3 Successive Quantum Gates 63
6.4 Mathematical Interlude 65
6.5 Successive Application of the Same Quantum Gate 66
6.6 Measurement Devices are not Reversible 68
CHAPTER SUMMARY 69
FURTHER READING 70

7 Putting a Spin on Spin 71

7.1 Quantum Spin Systems 71
7.2 Representations of Spin-1/2 Systems 72
7.3 Quantum Gates and Spin-1/2 Systems 75
CHAPTER SUMMARY 77
FURTHER READING 77

8 Your Basis, My Basis 78

8.1 Taking Stock 78
8.2 Changing Basis States 79
8.3 Changing Quantum Basis States 82
 CONTENTS vii

◦ ◦ ◦
8.4 Three Basis Sets: 0 , 60 , and −60 86
8.5 Dot and Inner Products of State Vectors 87
8.6 Spin-1/2 States 90
8.7 General Basis State Transformations 92
8.8 The Three-Polarizing-Sheets Experiment 94
8.9 A “Minus 1” Mystery 98
8.10 Bennett–Brassard-84 Encryption Protocol 100
CHAPTER SUMMARY 107
FURTHER READING 108

9 Multi-Qubit Systems, Entanglement, and Quantum Weirdness 109

9.1 Two-Qubit Quantum States 109
9.2 General Two-Qubit States 111
9.3 Two-Qubit Basis Vectors are Orthogonal 113
9.4 Single Qubits and Product States 115
9.5 Quantum Entanglement 116
9.6 Generalized Born Rule and Entanglement 120
9.7 Entanglement and the States of Just One of the Qubits 125
9.8 More on Entangled States 125
9.9 Changing Basis States for Two-Qubit States 128
9.10 Two Qubits and Three Measurement Bases 129
CHAPTER SUMMARY 133
FURTHER READING 134

10 Quantum Circuits and Multi-Qubit Applications 135

10.1 Two-Qubit Gates 135
10.2 CNOT Gates 135
10.3 Quantum Circuits (Quantum Gate Arrays) 139
10.4 The Bell Circuit 140
10.5 The Reverse Bell Circuit 142
10.6 Entanglement Swapping 143
10.7 No-Cloning Theorem 146
10.8 Superdense Coding 149
10.9 Quantum State Teleportation 151
10.10 SWAP Gates 157
CHAPTER SUMMARY 158
FURTHER READING 158
viii CONTENTS

11 Quantum Computing Algorithms 159

11.1 Welcome to the Quantum Algorithm Zoo 159
11.2 The Deutsch Algorithm 160
11.3 Implementing Uf with Simple Quantum Gates 168
11.4 The Simon Search Algorithm 168
11.5 Multi-Qubit Hadamard Gates 175
CHAPTER SUMMARY 180
FURTHER READING 181

12 More Quantum Algorithms 182

12.1 Introduction 182
12.2 Grover Search Algorithm 182
12.3 Error Correction 199
12.4 Quantum Computational Chemistry 206
CHAPTER SUMMARY 211
FURTHER READING 211

13 RSA Encryption and the Shor Factoring Algorithm 213

13.1 RSA Encryption and Factoring 213
13.2 Number Theory Warm-Up 215
13.3 The RSA Algorithm 218
13.4 The Shor Factoring Algorithm 220
13.5 Connecting Periodic Functions and Factoring 222
13.6 Period Finding and Fourier Analysis 225
13.7 Quantum Fourier Analysis 230
13.8 Modular Exponentiation 234
13.9 Greatest Common Divisor 237
CHAPTER SUMMARY 240
FURTHER READING 240

14 Fundamental Quantum Issues 242

14.1 Introduction 242
14.2 Bell’s Theorem and Quantum Weirdness 242
14.3 The Measurement Problem 251
14.4 Measurement and Decoherence 252
 CONTENTS ix

14.5 The Relationship between Classical and Quantum Computing 254

14.6 Entanglement and Quantum Measurements 254
14.7 Entanglement and Correlations of Measurement Outcomes 256
14.8 Another Look at Averages in Quantum Mechanics 261
14.9 Where is h? 262
CHAPTER SUMMARY 263
FURTHER READING 263

15 Complexifying Quantum States 265

15.1 Complex Numbers and Variables 265
15.2 Complex Exponentials 272
15.3 Quantum Fourier Transform 273
15.4 Relative Phases in Quantum States 279
15.5 The Bloch Sphere 283
CHAPTER SUMMARY 287
FURTHER READING 288

16 Present and Future QIS and QC 289

16.1 QC and QIS Overview 289
16.2 Programming Quantum Computers 291
16.3 Physics of Qubits 293
16.4 Quantum Information Science and the Quantum Internet 298
16.5 Quantum Computing and Machine Learning 300
16.6 Alternative Quantum Computer Architectures 301
16.7 Ethical Issues 303
16.8 Preparing for Your Quantum Career 304
16.9 Grand Finale 305
CHAPTER SUMMARY 306
FURTHER READING 306

Appendix: Quantum Toolkit 313

Index 320
 Preface

You have probably picked up this book because you are intrigued or puzzled by what you have
heard about quantum computing (QC) and quantum information science (QIS) and you want
to learn more. Why you should you keep reading? What is different in this book? We have
tried to position this book between the highly technical books aimed at professional scientists
and engineers with expertise in formal quantum mechanics and advanced mathematics and
those general audience books that use almost no math, though some are quite clever in finding
pictorial substitutes for the math.
Our presentation is aimed at readers who want an introduction to quantum computing that
gives them a strong basic understanding and prepares them to talk intelligently with the “ex-
perts.” If readers are so inclined, they will be ready to dig into the more technical aspects of the
field after working through this book. The material should be accessible to a typical undergrad-
uate student (or a senior-level high school student), whose mathematics background includes
secondary school algebra and a passing acquaintance with sines and cosines. No background
in physics is required, but if you are fortunate enough to have had a reasonable introductory
physics course in high school or college, what you learned there will provide a broader per-
spective on quantum computing. High school mathematics and physics teachers as well as
college and university faculty members who are not experts in quantum information science
and quantum computing should also enjoy, and benefit from, reading the book.
The following distinguish our presentation from others:

• We make the treatment accessible to those who do not have much background in physics,
computer science, and mathematics by providing just enough information about those
areas to enable you to understand the fundamental issues. We have avoided unneces-
sary mathematics and mathematical jargon, but we treat carefully what we do use with
examples and explanatory comments.
• Discussions are spread out and we take time to build an understanding of the criti-
cal elements of quantum computing. Inspired by Galileo’s Dialogues Concerning Two
New Sciences, we have structured the presentation as a conversation between the two
of us, Alice and Bob, and Cardy, a typical undergraduate student, without much back-
ground in physics, computer science, or mathematics, who wants to learn about quantum
computing. The tone of the writing is more conversational than didactic.
• Applications of quantum computing are developed in some detail to show where and
how quantum computing has advantages over traditional computational methods. We
use those applications to ground the mathematics in specific and accessible problems to
be solved.
• We provide brief surveys of current quantum information and quantum computing de-
vices, advice about what you should do next if you want to learn more about those fields,
and an overview of career opportunities in those areas.
 PREFACE xi

Although we have worked hard to make the book accessible to a wide audience, we also want to
give you the concepts and vocabulary to read intelligently and knowledgeably about quantum
computing. We have employed the following methods to accomplish this:
• We introduce and thoroughly explore Dirac quantum state vector notation since it is the
most widely used notation in quantum computing and at the same time the notation
that you in our target audience have probably not seen before, even if you have taken
introductory courses in physics, mathematics, or computer science.
• There is a focus on multiple representations of quantum states and operations on quan-
tum states, using abstract symbols, graphical (state space) diagrams, and mathematical
column vectors and matrices. We emphasize multiple representations because quantum
states are the bread-and-butter of quantum computing. No prior background in vectors
and matrices is needed to understand the arguments in this book.
• Clear ways of thinking about the role of quantum measurements in quantum computing
and how you represent those measurements formally are presented. In Chapter 14, we
show you how to make a “quantum sandwich,” which encapsulates everything we can
learn from quantum measurements.
• We provide in-text exercises (Try Its) that you can use to build your fluency in writing
descriptions of quantum states and to check your understanding of the concepts.
• A summary is given of quantum formulas and matrix terminology in the Appendix:
Quantum Toolkit.
The quantum information science and quantum computing revolutions are just getting under-
way. To give you a sense of the diversity in both people and their educational backgrounds in
this rapidly growing field, we have included at the end of Chapter 16 links to short biographical
sketches of those involved who work in those fields in academia, in government labs, and in
private business and industry.
Although the fundamental principles of quantum information science and quantum com-
puting are reasonably well established, the details of the applications of those principles are
likely to change dramatically over the next few decades. In the last chapter of the book, we
write about what we believe are likely to be the most exciting developments in these fields.
We also discuss moral and ethical concerns raised by the possibility of dramatic changes in
computational power that are likely to be the product of the second quantum revolution.
Perhaps we should also tell you about what is not in the book—things that you might have
expected to see. The following are avoided:
• Formal linear algebra. Although much of the math we use is based on linear algebra, we
don’t, at our level of discussion, need to use linear algebra jargon and theorems. We are
confident that our treatment will prepare you to learn more about those topics if you want
to go further in quantum computing.
• Complex numbers. Standard quantum mechanics uses complex numbers and complex
variables. But we demonstrate that almost all the basic concepts of quantum computing
and quantum information science can be treated without them. In Chapter 15, we do show
you why complex numbers are needed for more general situations in quantum mechanics
and explain the additional resources they provide for quantum computing.
xii PREFACE

• Stern–Gerlach measurements using magnetic field gradients. To appreciate those mea-

surements, which were important in the historical development of quantum mechanics,
you need a deeper grounding in physics: atomic and molecular beams, magnetic dipole
moments, and forces exerted on dipoles due to magnetic field gradients. More impor-
tantly, those kinds of measurement are unlikely to play a role in quantum computing and
quantum information even though they show up in many books on quantum comput-
ing. We believe that polarized light provides a much more accessible physical system to
illustrate the basics of quantum states. We do give an introduction to so-called spin-1/2
quantum states but without the details of how measurements are carried out on those sys-
tems. We refer the reader who is interested in those details to many fine textbooks and
online articles.
• Computational complexity. Many computer scientists and quantum computer people
spend a lot of time building classifications of the difficulty of the problems addressed
by computational algorithms. You may have read about P and NP problems. Those cate-
gories have proliferated into an alphabet soup of acronyms. Although these classifications
help you to understand the kinds of problems quantum computers can advantageously
solve (compared to traditional computers), we believe that knowledge of these categories
is not necessary to understand the fundamentals of quantum computing and are best left
aside until the basics are mastered. In a few specific examples, we do provide arguments
that show that quantum computation often requires fewer (and, in some cases, far fewer)
computational steps compared to the corresponding classical algorithms, but we avoid
connecting these to the traditional computational complexity categories.
For those of you who are educators, this book provides more than enough content for a
semester-long course. The core material is in Chapters 1–10. Chapters 11–13 provide detailed
discussions of several quantum algorithms. The algorithms are relatively independent. Pick
those that your students will find most interesting and discuss the details at a level appropriate
for your students. If you have time to do only one algorithm in detail, we suggest the Grover
algorithm in Chapter 12. It requires the least mathematical background to understand the goal
and we have presented several different and complementary ways of understanding how the
algorithm works. Chapters 14 and 15 treat some fundamental issues in quantum mechanics.
Those chapters are important for readers who want a deeper dive into QIS and QC in prepara-
tion for further coursework or reading. Students interested in current technology and careers
in QC and QIS can read Chapter 16 on their own.
Throughout the book, as we have mentioned, we make use of three ways of working with
quantum states: symbolic state vectors, graphical representations (state space), and column
vectors and matrices. We have found that the matrix methods are relatively unfamiliar to many
students. Even though the matrix methods involve only addition and multiplication, the lack
of familiarity means that many students have difficulties figuring out what goes where. You
should encourage your students to make use of online “matrix calculators” until they are more
comfortable with the matrix manipulations. (Just search online for “matrix calculator.”) The
book is also well suited to self-study. We encourage students to form collaborative groups to
read the book together.
 PREFACE xiii

Our introduction to quantum computing is built around a fundamental theme: Quantum

states, quantum entanglement (we will explain what that means), and quantum measurements
provide “resources” for computation that in principle far exceed what can be done with tradi-
tional computers. We will play this leitmotif again and again throughout the book. However,
quantum states are far from our everyday intuitions about how the world works. In fact, when
it comes to quantum states and quantum computing, we are all “novices,” and it takes many
hours of work to move from being a novice to being an expert. So, it would be presumptuous
for us to say that working through this book will make you an expert in quantum computing.
Our goals are to provide you with the basic concepts and formalism of quantum computing,
to show you how quantum states can be manipulated using quantum algorithms to carry out
computationally useful processes, and to look to the future of where quantum computing is
likely to go.
We treat many of the “classic” quantum algorithms as case studies to show how our fun-
damental theme has been applied to solve computational problems that are difficult if not
impossible for traditional computers. We don’t expect that most of you will be developing new
quantum algorithms, just as the productive use of traditional computers does not require that
you develop new numerical algorithms. In practice, you simply make use of what others have
created and assemble the computer code to tackle the problem at hand. But we do want you to
have the tools needed to be able to read and talk intelligently about quantum computing.
As mentioned previously, we have, by design, limited the math background required to ben-
efit from this book. That said, we do recognize that some experience with symbolic (algebraic)
reasoning, with graphical and geometric representations, and, more importantly, with persis-
tence and perseverance will be important to grasp the fundamental concepts and ideas. Our
advice to all readers: Give yourself plenty of time to work through and digest the material and
to reread the arguments to deepen your understanding. Keep in mind that it took physicists
and mathematicians several decades to complete the development of quantum mechanics and
another 50–60 years to recognize the revolutionary potential of quantum mechanics to rebuild
completely the foundations of information science and computing. So, as another Bob (Bobby
McFerrin) sang, “Don’t worry, be happy” if some concepts seem rather puzzling at first. You
are in good company. As dedicated teachers, we need to remind you, as we remind our stu-
dents, if you are not confused, you are not learning. Or as a skiing instructor once told Bob,
you are never going to learn to ski unless you fall down.
Let us close by mixing metaphors: we hope you will persevere through your confusion
as you navigate the moguls on the slopes of quantum mechanics, quantum computing, and
quantum information science.
The book’s website QuantumComputingA2B.org will include solutions to the Try Its, ad-
ditional problems for exams and group problem solving, resources for teachers, links to other
websites for concept assessments tools, and “breaking news” about quantum computing and
quantum information science.
Your devoted authors,
Alice and Bob
 Acknowledgments

We express our deep appreciation to Steve Arendt, John Donohue, and Diandra Leslie-Pelecky
for providing feedback on the manuscript, encouraging us to clarify our thoughts and to focus
on the central message. Many students and physics education colleagues over the years helped
us to understand and learn to explain quantum mechanics more effectively, though that is a
lifelong journey. Oxford University Press’s Sonke Adlung provided both encouragement and
thoughtful comments from several anonymous reviewers. Giulia Lipparini, our OUP Project
Editor, skillfully and gently led us through the intricate journey of getting the manuscript
into its final form. We also thank Roopa Vineetha Nelson, our senior production manager,
and Henry MacKeith, our copy editor, for their thorough, but gentle guidance in refining and
polishing the manuscript.
 1 Introduction

In Nature’s infinite book of secrecy,

A little I can read.
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

1.1 Meet Alice, Bob, and Cardy

ALICE: A nuclear engineer and educator with a strong theoretical background, she is very
experienced with translating quantum computing and quantum cryptography for high school
students and teachers.
BOB: An experimental physicist who likes to think about how quantum computers will ac-
tually be built and how you can use lasers and microwaves to prepare, manipulate, and analyze
quantum states. But he also has a philosophical bent: What does quantum computing tell us
about fundamental issues in quantum mechanics and information theory? What does it teach
us about the fundamental nature of reality?
CARDY: A first-year university student with a double major in business and English—
wants to know more about quantum computing both because it sounds cool, with many
philosophical puzzles, and because it may be the future of the information technology (IT)
business world. CARDY hasn’t had physics since high school and math ended with algebra II
and trig.

1.2 What’s the Big Deal about Quantum Computing?

ALICE: Welcome, Cardy.
CARDY: Hi, Alice and Bob. Thanks for inviting me over. I heard that you two had figured out
some simple ways of understanding why quantum computing (QC) and quantum information
science (QIS) are important and can explain all of that to a non-expert like me. I saw your note
in the student newspaper about wanting someone to critique your new book manuscript. That’s
why I called. As a business and English major, I want to find out more about these subjects.
I keep reading that they are going to be the next “big thing” in the business world and that
means opportunities for building new businesses and developing new innovations. Even our
School of Business has had a few talks about quantum computing. Besides, it would be cool to
wow my friends with my knowledge of quantum computing, entanglement, and all the stuff
I’ve read about online.
Quantum Computing: From Alice to Bob. Alice Flarend and Bob Hilborn, Oxford University Press.
© Alice Flarend and Robert C. Hilborn (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192857972.003.0001
2 INTRODUCTION

In fact, I read about you and Bob in a blog post about quantum computing, and it is a great
pleasure to meet you in person.
BOB: I hate to disappoint you, Cardy, but Alice and I are not the actual characters whose
message-sending is described in both popular books and technical papers about quantum in-
formation, cryptography, and quantum computing. In fact, “Alice and Bob” first appeared
in print in 1978 in a cryptography article in the technical journal Communications of the
Association for Computing Machinery.
CARDY: I remember my parents talking about a 1969 movie Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.
Was that you guys?
BOB: Alas, no again. But the common mention of our names in quantum information and
quantum computing books was part of the motivation for our putting together these materials.
What better way to learn about quantum computing than from Alice and Bob!
ALICE: Bob and I decided that we ought to find a way to introduce people who aren’t experts
in quantum mechanics, linear algebra, and computer science to the key ideas and vocabulary
of QC and QIS. There are lots of books that take a fairly high-level approach, which is fine
for math and physics majors but leaves most folks baffled. There are also several books that
avoid math entirely and focus on general concepts, often with idiosyncratic models and weird
terminology that don’t make contact with how most scientists, engineers, and mathematicians
talk about quantum computers. We worked hard to find the “sweet spot” between insider jargon
wrapped in unfamiliar mathematics and fluffy treatments that seem strange and inadequate to
both experts and novices. Since both of us struggled to penetrate the many layers of jargon that
expert authors have brought to the field, we felt we were in a good position to find that sweet
spot. Jargon is fine of course for the experts, but many authors use it mainly to show that they
are part of the “tribe” and to separate the tribe from outsiders.
CARDY: Speaking of confusing jargon, what’s the difference between quantum computing
and quantum information science? To me, they sound the same.
ALICE: Thanks for calling us out! We need to practice what we preach. Please do that
whenever we get carried away like that. “Quantum information science” has become the gen-
eral term for the use of quantum principles and technology for the transfer of information
(what you might call quantum communications), the processing of information (QC), and
for the sensitive detection of various kinds of physical properties (quantum sensing). People
are already talking about building a quantum internet to enhance the security of informa-
tion exchange. In this book we focus on the first two–QIS and QC. To appreciate quantum
sensing, you need some background in physics and how quantum systems interact with their
environment.
BOB: As we said in our email messages, we’ll be delighted to spend several days with you. We
hope that your background in English will help you tell us where our presentation is muddled
or confusing.
Of course, quantum computing is built on the basic principles of quantum mechanics and
there are many parts of quantum mechanics that are conceptually quite challenging for people
new to the field and to experts. Even though scientists and mathematicians know how to do
quantum calculations, there is still a lot of controversy about what those calculations tell us
about the nature of reality. We have tried to develop quantum computing ideas in a way that
avoids, at least for a while, those conceptual challenges, but we will need to deal with them
eventually. And, in their own way, they are rather cool challenges.
 A BRIEF PREVIEW 3

CARDY: I am a bit worried about my math preparation for quantum computing. I keep
hearing about linear algebra, Hilbert spaces, operators, state vectors, complex numbers, and
the like—none of which I have studied in my math courses.
BOB: I hope you will find that Alice and I have been careful to minimize the formal math-
ematics in our story of quantum computing by choosing examples carefully and avoiding
unnecessary mathematical jargon. Of course, the math is important. Every community has
its own language and for the community of physicists, engineers, and computer scientists,
mathematics is the lingua franca.
To understand how quantum computing works, we are going to need some math to help
us with the reasoning. Fortunately, all you will need is some simple algebra, basic concepts
of vectors (which we will help you with pictorially), and a few sines and cosines—the latter
in fact appear only in only a few places in this book. However, since we want you to learn to
“read” the equations of quantum computing, we have used the symbols that are commonly
deployed in the field. Those symbols were borrowed from quantum mechanics, and they will
look strange when you first meet them. But if you are patient and practice writing and reading
those symbols, you will get used to them.
ALICE: Let me warn you that the experts may be annoyed by our approach because our
examples do simplify the math. For example, ordinary quantum mechanics makes use of com-
plex numbers and we have found a way to avoid them for most of this book. Our approach is
to help you understand the basic ideas and prepare you to then move into the more complex
mathematics if you so choose.
CARDY: Now that you mention it, I do recall one of my math teachers in high school say-
ing something about real and imaginary numbers. I never did figure out what an imaginary
number means.
ALICE: It turns out that we can introduce the basics of quantum computing with only ordi-
nary (“real”) numbers. In Chapter 15, the next-to-last chapter, we will show you why we need
complex numbers in some aspects of quantum information science, but they are not essential
for the main ideas. There is also some mathematical jargon we will mention only in passing
in case you read about those ideas in the quantum computing literature. We’ll do our best to
avoid excess jargon as much as possible.

1.3 A Brief Preview

BOB: Let me give you a quick preview of the story we tell in this book. To help you develop
an understanding of quantum computing, we will need the key concept of a quantum state.
We say more about quantum states below. Like many concepts in science and math, it will be
important to think about states using multiple ways of representing quantum states. We will
introduce you to (1) abstract state “vectors,” (2) graphical pictures of quantum state “spaces,”
and (3) numerical forms of mathematical objects called column vectors and row vectors, which
are straightforward generalizations of ordinary vectors.
CARDY: I’m confused already. I don’t know anything about vectors, state spaces, or column
vectors.
4 INTRODUCTION

ALICE: We don’t expect you to be familiar with the concepts. We will introduce them one
by one and give you several ways of thinking about their role in QC and QIS.
We have also found that many introductions to quantum computing and quantum infor-
mation science use confusing language about quantum measurements, collapse of quantum
states, jumps between quantum states, and the results of measurements on entangled states.
Keeping in mind how actual quantum measurements are carried out, we will show you a way
of talking about those concepts that will help sweep away the fog surrounding many of those
discussions.
CARDY: Before we get too far into the weeds, can you explain how quantum theory is
different from quantum mechanics? I’ve heard both terms used in reading about quantum
computing.
BOB: They are essentially the same. When quantum theory emerged in the first third of the
20th century, its way of thinking about how the world works was significantly different from
what physicists had used before. To distinguish the new from the old, which physicists called
“Newtonian mechanics” or “classical mechanics,” they invented the term quantum mechanics.
In physics, mechanics means theories of motion, forces, and the like.
CARDY: So, “classical” is like classical music? You know, Joseph Boulogne (Chevalier
de Saint George), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Clara Schumann, Richard Wagner, Nadia
Boulanger, Marin Alsop, William Grant Still, and the like.
BOB: Well, not quite. What “classical” means is physics that does not need quantum me-
chanics to explain what is going on. Classical physics can be just as mind-bending as quantum
physics, particularly when it comes to things like chaos theory.
To give you more context about what we are going to do, let me explain a bit about the
differences between the Newtonian worldview and that of quantum mechanics. In Newtonian
mechanics—before quantum mechanics came along—we thought of the world as being made
of objects whose positions and velocities we can track and predict if we know the interactions
among those objects. With the addition of theories of electricity and magnetism (now unified
as electromagnetism), physicists thought they had a reasonably comprehensive picture of how
the world works. Interactions among material entities (such as atoms, protons, electrons) and
fields like the electromagnetic field and the gravitational field could explain everything. Of
course, there were many details to be worked out, but the basic conceptual structure was in
place, or so they thought. The world was essentially deterministic. What does that mean? Here
is an example: If we knew the positions and velocities of all these entities that make up a system
at some time, according to the Newtonian worldview, we could predict the future behavior of
those entities. If you could apply that method to the bouncing numbered balls in a lottery
machine, you could get rich very quickly!
CARDY: That’s scary. You mean you could predict everything that might happen?
BOB: That indeed is the Newtonian worldview. But there is a catch. In real life, trying to
do that becomes practically impossible if there are more than a few objects in the system. To
make matters worse, even for simple systems with only a few objects, the precision with which
we can make those predictions diminishes as the systems evolve in time because we can never
really know the current state absolutely perfectly. Furthermore, with chaotic systems (like the
weather), the precision of the predictions diminishes surprisingly rapidly because chaotic be-
havior changes dramatically. Such systems are hyper-sensitive to even small changes in their
 A BRIEF PREVIEW 5

initial conditions. You may have heard of the butterfly effect: The flapping of a butterfly’s wings
in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas.
All of that said, science has moved beyond the Newtonian worldview. With the discovery
of quantum mechanics in the early 20th century, we now know that the world at its most fun-
damental is not deterministic. As far as we know today, there is randomness and probability
at the core of nature.
We will see that the strange aspects of quantum states—combinations of states called su-
perposition states, a property of those states called entanglement, and the role of randomness
and probability when we make observations on (“measure”) a quantum system—will turn out
to be of crucial importance in quantum information science and quantum computing. In fact,
sets of procedures—algorithms—in QIS and QC make use of all these strange aspects.
We will start off with a look at traditional computers, which are often called “classical
computers” since they don’t directly involve quantum mechanics. The concepts of classical
computers will form a good platform from which to launch ourselves into quantum mechan-
ics and ultimately quantum computing. We hope you will be patient because it will be awhile
before we get into the meat of quantum computing. We have found that if we don’t spend
some time on basic quantum concepts, then quantum computing and quantum information
processing more generally will seem even more strange. Well armed with those concepts, you
will find quantum computing, though still strange, much more comprehensible.
Once we have laid the foundation with the crucial quantum concepts, we will show you
several algorithms that demonstrate the advantages of quantum computing over classical com-
puting. We will also introduce some key issues in quantum cryptography and error correction.
That may sound rather boring but they are of great importance in any kind of computing and
their quantum versions raise many intriguing issues about what is information and what is
“noise.”
ALICE: We will end our tour of QC and QIS by visiting several quantum issues that are not
directly part of quantum computing but that, given the tools we will have learned about, we will
be able to understand. Those topics reinforce the notion that the quantum world is conceptually
and experimentally far removed from the Newtonian world. For example, there is some deep
quantum weirdness in a famous result called Bell’s theorem (which makes us question the
nature of reality) and in the relationship between classical computing and quantum computing.
BOB: We’ll conclude our voyage with a look at the future—both your personal future, Cardy,
what you ought to do next if you want to learn more about quantum computing, and also the
future of quantum computing itself.
CARDY: That was a big help. All that sounds exciting. I’m ready to get going with the
real stuff. But could you give me a quick preview of why we should worry about quantum
computing, besides its being cool?
ALICE: Fair question, but one that is hard to answer because the field of quantum com-
puting in some ways is still in its infancy. But we do know that quantum computing allows us
to carry out calculations that would be completely impractical with classical computers. More
importantly, quantum computing allows us to think about problems in a completely different
way from the way we think about classical computation. As an analogy, I might point to the
discovery of microbes (bacteria and viruses) as the carriers of diseases. After that discovery,
we had entirely new ways of preventing and treating disease. Similarly, I believe that ultimately
6 INTRODUCTION

quantum computing will open our eyes to whole new ways of thinking and issues that we don’t
even recognize today. Quantum computing is not just doing traditional computing more ef-
ficiently or faster, though that in itself would be worthwhile, but it is doing computation in
entirely new ways. Even though we don’t know exactly how that is going to work out, the
possibilities are just mind-blowing. Already we know that QCs can find energies and config-
urations of molecules more efficiently than classical computers. That opens the door to new
methods of drug discovery, for example. We also know that quantum computers can crack
many of the encryption methods used to keep data secure. But quantum methods can be used
to develop encryption systems that are yet more secure.

1.4 How to Use This Book: Encouragement

and Coaching
BOB: To get you immersed into quantum computing as smoothly as possible, we have broken
up our story into chapters and the chapters into sections to provide a gradual introduction
to new information and concepts. Along the way, we suggest various activities labeled “Try
It” to encourage you to reflect on what you are learning and to examine the details that are
important in understanding the concepts. By doing those Try Its, you will build your ability
to think “quantumly” and you will increase your confidence that you can tackle cutting-edge
concepts in quantum information science.
Both Alice and I believe that you can master all parts of this book because we firmly believe
that the human mind is a “muscle” that can become stronger with exercise. Your abilities, both
mental and physical, are not fixed but can grow over time. But we also recognize what you
have all experienced: learning requires effort, practice, and coaching. Just think of what you
went through to learn to speak, read, and understand your native language. But you persisted
and with help from your family, friends, and teachers you now do those things naturally and
usually without much effort. We have written this book to help direct your QC and QIS efforts
in productive ways, to provide you with practice, and some coaching. QC and QIS, like all fields
of human knowledge, have a new vocabulary unfamiliar to beginners, new concepts, and new
ways of thinking about and reasoning with those concepts. We urge you to work with friends as
you learn about QC and QIS to coach and to encourage each other when things seem difficult.
ALICE: When Bob and I teach physics classes, we often hear students say, “I understand
the concepts but I’m not a math person.” That statement does express students’ feelings about
math, but it is not grounded in the reality of how one learns. While learning about QC and
QIS, it is important to realize that there are no “QC and QIS people.” In fact, we all belong to
the large group of people trying to understand how QC and QIS work and what those fields
are good for. The fields are brand new and are still in a state of growth and flux. Furthermore,
the quantum world does not come naturally or intuitively to anyone—don’t let the experts get
away with saying “it is obvious that. . ..” It only becomes obvious after you have spent hours,
days, weeks, and longer figuring out the details and making connections among concepts.
We do acknowledge that people pick up some things more easily than others. You might
be great at drawing, but you have a tough time learning a foreign language. It all depends on
 FURTHER READING 7

what you already know and how big a stretch it is to understand and master the new activity.
It also critically depends on how much effort you are willing to put in. We have written this
book by breaking up an extremely rich meal into chewable and digestible bites and providing
lots of encouragement and feedback.
If you don’t know any algebra, learning what is going on in QIS and QC, which is the goal of
this book, will be difficult because the language of the quantum world is mathematics. However,
your algebraic fluency should increase with practice, and we provide a gentle on-ramp for all
the math that we need in this book. If you feel that the math in a particular section is too
dense, feel free to skim through that section, if so inclined, and return to the details later. We
will point out specific sections that are mathematically challenging and others than can be
skimmed without damaging the overall understanding of the book.
Since your thoughts and attitudes about learning are critical to the benefits you will get
from this book, we ask you to take a few minutes to reflect on what it takes to learn. This may
seem like an unusual exercise for a book on QC and QIS, but research and our experience have
shown that this kind of reflection is important in your journey to become an effective learner.
We, as learners, need to pay attention to what we do when we learn because there is more to it
than just taking notes. Often we are working hard but not noticing it as being an integral part
of learning.

Try It 1.1

Write a few sentences about an experience you had learning something new (a sport, knit-
ting, a game, cooking, woodworking, drawing, playing a musical instrument . . .) and how
you used persistence to become better over time at that activity. Did you do it all in one
go or did you get better after repeating it? Did you learn the activity just by reading about
it or did you have to pick up the ball, for example, and practice throwing it?

Can we learn QC and QIS? We urge you to join Ceasar Chavez, educator and civil rights leader,
and former President Barack Obama, in shouting “Yes, we can!”
CARDY: All of this sounds great. Let’s get started!

FURTHER READING

A history of the characters “Alice and Bob” is available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Alice_and_Bob.
2 Traditional Computing

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the
music.
Friedrich Nietzsche

2.1 Traditional Computing versus Quantum

Computing
ALICE: Before we get into quantum computing, we need to say a few words about traditional
computing and traditional computers. Some physicists like to call this “classical” comput-
ing, because as we mentioned in Chapter 1, the history of physics is often divided into a
pre-quantum era called “classical physics” and the contemporary era of “quantum physics.”
Classical physics is the realm of Isaac Newton and his study of motion and forces; James Clerk
Maxwell, working on electricity and magnetism; and Albert Einstein, who extended those
studies to objects traveling close to the speed of light. Of course, there were hundreds of others
contributing to these studies, but scientists, like people in many fields, prefer focusing on a
small hagiography to honor.
Quantum physics, not surprisingly, focuses on those physical phenomena where the con-
cepts and theories of quantum mechanics are needed to understand what is going on. When
talking about quantum physics, people mean the structure of atoms and molecules, nuclear
physics, elementary particle physics, semiconductors, lasers, and so on.
The important point is that the classical physics world was turned on its head in the 1920s
with the development of quantum theory—the theory describing the world at the atomic and
subatomic levels. That theory became known as quantum mechanics and you can think of
QC and QIS more generally as applications of quantum mechanics to computational and
information processing situations.
CARDY: I read that today’s computers and computer chips are built from semiconductors.
Don’t we need quantum mechanics to understand the properties of semiconductors?
ALICE: Classical (traditional) computing (prior to the development of quantum comput-
ers) is actually based on a mixture of classical (pre-quantum physics) and quantum physics.
Quantum physics helped scientists and engineers develop the semiconductor devices that
power almost all contemporary computers. Even though the understanding of the material
properties of those semiconductors grew out quantum theory, the devices, as used in classical
computers, operate in regimes in which classical physics (mostly electricity and magnetism)

Quantum Computing: From Alice to Bob. Alice Flarend and Bob Hilborn, Oxford University Press.
© Alice Flarend and Robert C. Hilborn (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192857972.003.0002
 BINARY DIGITS 9

are perfectly adequate to describe their behavior. The details of quantum physics are not
needed.
BOB: Let’s look under the hood of a classical computer. Most of us who use computers
these days know that you have to tell computers what to do. Those instructions are computer
programs. Writing them is called coding. An app for your smart phone is just a computer
program that tells the computer inside the smart phone what to do. So, writing a best-selling
app is “just” computer programming. Fortunately, decades of work in computer science have
produced what are called high-level computer programming languages that are close enough
to everyday language and everyday mathematics to make coding relatively straightforward.
But, a big part of using a computer is first figuring out what you want the computer to do. That
part is called developing an algorithm. And then you need to work out how to implement that
algorithm in the programming language you decide to use.
CARDY: My high school tried to teach us some computer coding, but I remember spending
most of my time getting semicolons and capital letters in the right places and even then, the
code hardly even did what I wanted it to do. I hope quantum computing is not going to be like
that.
ALICE: Your experience, unfortunately, is not that different from what most people find
when they get started with coding. I have to warn you that some aspects of quantum computing
require that same level of attention to detail. But we will deal with that when we have to. Right
now, we want to focus on the basics that underpin all computation.

2.2 Binary Digits

ALICE: To understand what quantum computing is all about, we need to dig a bit deeper into
the inner workings of a computer. The code you write in a high-level language is translated by
another set of instructions called a compiler into code that the machinery of the computer can
understand directly: This “machine language” consists of strings of 1s and 0s known as bits
(“bit” is an abbreviation of “binary digit”). The binary number system has just two symbols
in it, traditionally labeled 0 and 1. Our everyday number system is a decimal system, with 10
symbols: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. It turns out that using just 0s and 1s is sufficient for almost
all computational work and it greatly simplifies the design and construction of computers.
So, if you looked at the machine language version of a computer program, you would see
something like 10011110001110011111100. . .. Not very informative to the typical human.
Fortunately, the ordinary computer user (that includes you when you use your smart phone)
never has to worry about the binary digits, though you often see them scrolling across a com-
puter screen in tech movies. You only need the binary digits if you are trying to save the
world from evil hackers or if you want to understand the fundamental systems that govern
all traditional computers.
BOB: Figure 2.1 shows a photograph of the electrical circuitry of a traditional computer.
Each of the “wires” (the long, narrow, light-colored lines in the figure) can be either at a high
electrical voltage (usually 3–5 volts, the equivalent of a few AA batteries stacked end to end)
or at a low voltage (usually 0). The electronic circuits inside the black rectangular devices
(“integrated circuits”) sense those voltages and carry out computation actions based on those
10 TRADITIONAL COMPUTING

Fig. 2.1 A circuit board of a typical classical computer.

Source: Miguel-á-Padriñán-343457 pexels.com.

voltages. In principle, you could be sensing other physical quantities (the presence or absence
of light, the presence or absence of sound, a switch in an “on” or “off ” position, etc.), so it is
useful to make a more abstract representation of what is happening in the wires.
I like to distinguish between the physical state of the wire (high voltage or low voltage)
and the abstract representation, the “computational state,” using the binary digits 0 and 1. The
voltage state of each wire is associated with a binary digit—a bit—whose value can be either 0
or 1.
Most often, a 0 is associated with the low-voltage state and a 1 is associated with the
high-voltage state, though there is no fundamental reason you couldn’t make the opposite
association.
If we measure the electrical voltage of a particular wire in an operating computer, we would
record a series of low voltages and high voltages, which could be translated into the abstract
representation of a series of 0s and 1s.
CARDY: I’ve heard about bits, but what does a series of 1s and 0s mean? When I see them
in the movies, they are always in a long string.
ALICE: The series might represent many things. For example, it could be a coded mes-
sage. Think of Morse code or a flashing light signal (“one if by land; two if by sea”). Several
wires (bits) looked at together might represent a numerical value (the 8-bit sequence 00000011
could represent the regular (decimal) number 3) or an address within the computer where in-
formation is to be stored or retrieved. Or they could be a code for the instructions of what an
integrated circuit in the computer is to do based on the input bits.
 LOGIC GATES AND TRUTH TABLES 11

Going into the details of these representations would take us too far afield. More important
for our understanding of quantum computing are some simple computer operations, which
use one or two bits as input and produce an output of other bits.

2.3 Logic Gates and Truth Tables

ALICE: These operations are similar to binary logic (sometimes called Boolean logic after
George Boole, a mathematician active in the 1800s), which was originally developed to rep-
resent the logic of combinations of statements (sometimes called “propositions”) that can be
either true (T) or false (F). In the 1930s, Claude Shannon and others realized that binary logic
could be used to describe the operations of digital computing devices.
Let’s start with a few Boolean logic examples. Proposition A (“I am hungry”) can be either
True (I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast) or False (because I just consumed a full bag
of chips). A Boolean logic operation called NOT can act on the proposition. For example NOT
A is NOT (“I am hungry”) = “I am not hungry.” A horizontal bar over the proposition symbol
is used to label the result of NOT: for example, NOT A = Ā. One of the quirky (but important)
features of logic is that in most cases we don’t care about the meaning of the proposition; we
focus just on its logical structure. That drives most people nuts.
In the language of binary logic we say that if P is True, then NOT P is False and vice versa.
This assumes, of course, that the proposition is either True or False. In binary logic there are
only two possibilities. Other situations are not binary systems. For example, I could be hungry,
ravenous, a little hungry, stuffed, not hungry, . . . the list goes on. In general, hunger is not a
binary (two-state) system.
For binary digits, if a bit has the value 0, then NOT produces a bit with the value 1 and
vice versa. Whenever something acts on a bit or a set of bits, we call that an “operation.” We
pictorially represent the devices that carry out the operations as “gates” (not related to Bill
Gates). An operation can be a simple mathematical function like adding or multiplying. It can
also be one of many less-familiar functions, which we will get to later.
BOB: Figure 2.2 is a pictorial representation of a NOT gate, indicated by the triangle with
the small circle on the right. The input bit (or proposition in logic) is indicated by A on the left.
The “output” that results from applying the gate operation to A is on the right. The horizontal
line over the symbol A is used to indicate the bit “opposite” that of A (0 if A is 1 and 1 if A is
0) or the opposite “truth value” (False if A is True and True if A is False).
BOB: Let’s think about the NOT operation in a slightly different way: a “truth table.” The
left column represents the possible values of the input (0 or 1) and the right column represents

A A = NOT A

Fig. 2.2 The triangle with the small circle on the right is a pictorial representation of a NOT gate. The gate acts on the bit A
to produce “NOT A.”
12 TRADITIONAL COMPUTING

Table 2.1 The truth table for NOT.

A NOT A A NOT A
False True 0 1

True False 1 0

A C = A AND B = A&B
B

Fig. 2.3 The symbolic representation of an AND gate.

the corresponding output values. Truth tables (and their generalizations) will be helpful when
we get to quantum computing operations.
BOB: In Table 2.1 the two columns on the left give the True/False values for A and NOT A.
The two columns on the right give the binary 0 and 1 equivalents.
CARDY: Unless I am missing something, I don’t think you can do much with a gate with
just one input.
ALICE: Great point, Cardy; so, let’s look at some gates that have two inputs (two bits). These
are called two-bit gates.
CARDY: Hmm, two-bit sounds rather derogatory.
ALICE: I had never thought of it that way. Yes, jargon in many fields sounds absurd to
newcomers. But the “experts” have gotten used to the jargon and they expect you to understand
what they mean by two bits.
Our first example of a two-bit gate is an AND gate, as shown in Figure 2.3. The AND
operation has two inputs A and B and one output C.
CARDY: A is for Alice and B is for Bob, right? And of course, C is for Cardy!
ALICE: I wish! Most computer scientists don’t share our sense of humor. In fact, they like
to leave the meaning of the symbols as unspecified as possible.
ALICE: Table 2.2 shows you the output of the AND gate for the four possible “states” of the
two input bits. In terms of binary logic, we say that the AND combination of two propositions
is true if and only if both propositions are true. Otherwise, the combined proposition is false.
Switching to bits, you should notice a pattern that the output of an AND gate is 1 only if A and
B are both 1s. Notice that this table is larger than the one for the NOT gate. As we add bits
to our repertoire, the number of possible combinations grows quickly. The larger repertoire
enhances our capabilities for dealing with more complex algorithms.

Try It 2.1

Write two simple sentences in everyday language and convince yourself the logic opera-
tion AND is close to what we mean by “and” in everyday language.
 LOGIC GATES AND TRUTH TABLES 13

Table 2.2 Truth table for an AND gate.

A B A AND B A B A AND B
False False False 0 0 0

False True False 0 1 0

True False False 1 0 0

True True True 1 1 1

A C = NOT (A&B) = A&B

B

Fig. 2.4 A pictorial representation of a NAND gate—an AND gate followed by a NOT operation.

BOB: Another important two-bit gate is called a NAND gate. Its output is the negative (op-
posite) of the AND operation, hence the N. You can think of the NAND gate as an AND gate,
followed by a NOT gate acting on C, the output of the AND gate. To simplify notation, we will
often use A AND B = A&B.
BOB: Figure 2.4 displays a symbolic representation of a NAND gate. Again, the horizontal
bar over A&B means NOT. The output of the NAND gate is NOT applied to the output of the
AND gate as shown in the table below.
Note the right-most column in the NAND truth table (Table 2.3) has the 1s and 0s swapped
compared to the AND truth table.

Try It 2.2

Using T and F (true and false) fill in the missing elements in the following NAND gate
truth table.
A B A& B
F F
F T
F T
T T

CARDY: The gates as represented by symbols or truth tables look fairly simple. How would
you build a device that carries out those operations?
BOB: That’s a great question, but we won’t go into the details of the electronic circuitry that
implements those gates. If you are interested, please take a look at Further Reading at the end of
the chapter. We won’t need to know anything about the actual devices in anything that follows.
You can buy an integrated circuit that has four NAND gates built in for less than a dollar, and
they do exactly what the table specifies without your knowing anything about the circuitry.
14 TRADITIONAL COMPUTING

Table 2.3 Truth table for a NAND gate.

A B NOT A&B
0 0 1

0 1 1

1 0 1

1 1 0

x x

y z=x y

Fig. 2.5 The CNOT circuit. The symbol ⊕ is explained in the text. x is the ‘control bit’ and y is the ‘target bit.’

Table 2.4 The CNOT gate.

Input Output z = x ⊕ y
x y x z

0 0 0 0

0 1 0 1

1 0 1 1

1 1 1 0

ALICE: Here is something that is truly amazing: Any binary logical operation can be imple-
mented as a combination of NAND gates. These logic gates can be combined to add, subtract,
multiply, and divide binary numbers and to carry out almost any computational task you
can think of. How do you prove that? It is a theorem in binary logic. The theorem is mod-
erately complicated, and of course, no one in their right mind would build a computer that
way. However, it is a statement that is very useful in theoretical aspects of computer science.
BOB: Let’s look at one final example of a two-input gate. This one, called the Controlled-
NOT gate (CNOT), has two inputs and two outputs. Again, there are four possible states for
the input bits. The pictorial representation of the CNOT gate is shown in Figure 2.5. Note that
we switched notation, replacing A, B, and C with x, y, and z to match the notation often found
in computer science and, as we shall see, in quantum computing.
The action of the gate is summarized in Table 2.4, which lists all possible two-bit inputs and
the corresponding CNOT outputs.
ALICE: Cardy, what do you notice about the table?
CARDY: Hmm? It seems like x, the control bit, does not change between input and output.
And y changes sometimes but not others.
 CHAPTER SUMMARY 15

ALICE: Good observation. Can you find a pattern that tells us when y changes and when it
doesn’t? Finding patterns is what science is all about.
CARDY: Aha! It seems to have to do with whether x = 1 or x = 0.
ALICE: Exactly! The CNOT gate is called a controlled-NOT because what happens to y is
controlled by the input x. If the control bit (x) is 1, the NOT operation changes y = 0 to 1 or
1 to 0. If the control bit is 0 (the top two entries in the table), then the output z is the same as
the input y: The NOT operation is not invoked.
CARDY: I get it, and I can guess that being able to control when something is applied or
not will be very useful in a computer.
ALICE: Yes, that’s right. If you replace 0 with False and 1 with True, then z = x ⊕ y is
the “Exclusive Or” (XOR) combination of x and y. Exclusive Or means that the combination is
True only if one of x and y is True. If both are True, the output of the gate is False. The standard
Exclusive Or gate has two inputs but only one output (z). The CNOT gate, by design, has two
inputs and two outputs.
The + in ⊕ reminds us that you can think of the CNOT gate as a two-bit “half adder”: To
see what that means, let’s have a quick review of binary addition. The results we need are

0 1 0 1
+0 +0 + 1 + 1
. (2.1)
0 1 1 10

CARDY: Oh, yeah. I remember that from 10th-grade math. In binary 10 means 2 in deci-
mals. I remember my math teacher’s joke: There are 10 types of people in the world: those who
understand binary and those who do not.
ALICE: I love it! We won’t need binary addition very much, but ⊕ and CNOT will show up
fairly frequently in quantum algorithms. The XOR results are

0⊕0=0 1⊕0=1 0⊕1=1 1⊕1=0 (2.2)

CARDY: It looks like the XOR is the same as regular binary adding except it drops the carry
bit 1 when we add 1 to 1.
ALICE: In the next chapter we will introduce the basics of quantum computing. Then we will
return to the question of the connection between quantum computing and classical computing.
You will see that classical computing is a special case of quantum computing, just like, in many
cases, classical physics is a special case of quantum physics.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Classical computers use binary digits (bits) to represent information, instructions, ad-
dresses, etc. which the computer circuitry manipulates to carry out computational ac-
tions, store and retrieve data, produce images, communicate with your printer, and to
show cute kitten videos.
• Those bits can take on values represented by the symbols 0 and 1.
16 TRADITIONAL COMPUTING

• The basic operations carried out by the computer can be represented by logic gates (or
just gates, for short) which use one or more bits as “input” and produce one or more bits
of “output.”

FURTHER READING

Charles Petzold, CODE: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software (Mi-
crosoft Press, Redmond, WA, 2000) provides a nice introduction to the basics of classical
computing.
 3 Traditional Bits in New Clothing

Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.

Aesop, ‘The Dog and the Shadow’, Fables.

3.1 Quick Review

ALICE: In Chapter 2 we introduced bits as the representations of the states of circuit elements
in classical computers. The states of those elements may be (and usually are) associated with
the numerical binary digits 0 and 1.
Before we jump into quantum computing, let’s look at several other ways of describing clas-
sical computing. In quantum computing we use symbolic representations that are based on
the way physicists describe quantum mechanics, blended with some notation and concepts
from computer science. At first, those representations look rather strange because you have
not experienced them in your math, physics, or computer science courses, even though the
underlying mathematics (mostly algebra, as we shall see) is not all that complicated. Bob and
I thought it would be helpful to introduce this notation first within the framework of classical
computing. This is not often done (one exception is [Mermin, 2007]) because the resulting
representations are not useful in traditional computing. But in quantum computing, this no-
tation is important and almost universally used. Thus, we think it is good to get used to it in
a familiar context first. This approach will help us understand what appears to be a deep gulf
between classical and quantum computing.
Cardy, you should know that this way of talking about classical computers is hardly ever
used by anyone else; so, if you mention this language to a computer science major, you will
probably get a puzzled expression in return.

3.2 State Symbols

BOB: Let’s start by thinking about two wires in a traditional computer. The voltage differences
between wires in the computer are used for several purposes: to bring information to gates for
processing and to indicate where data should come from and go. Each wire has two states (or
conditions): The voltage is “high” Vhigh or the voltage is “low” Vlow . Because there are just two
states, this is a binary system.

Quantum Computing: From Alice to Bob. Alice Flarend and Bob Hilborn, Oxford University Press.
© Alice Flarend and Robert C. Hilborn (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192857972.003.0003
18 TRADITIONAL BITS IN NEW CLOTHING

We can represent those two voltage states by the symbols |Vhigh ⟩ and |Vlow ⟩. Each symbol
consists of a vertical line on the left and an angle bracket on the right. You should think of the
combination |⟩ as a container. The contents of the container are names that label the two possi-
ble states. So, we could have |On⟩ and |Off ⟩ states or |T rue⟩ and |F alse⟩ states or |Awake⟩
and |Asleep⟩ states, and so on. These |⟩ symbols are widely used in quantum computing to
represent quantum states. You might think of state symbols as a form of emoji ☺. In and of
themselves, the labels or names have no numerical or even direct physical meaning.
This symbol is part of what is called Dirac notation, invented by Paul Dirac, an English
physicist who lived from 1902 to 1984, who was one of the pioneers in quantum mechanics.
He developed this notation in 1939, about 13 years after the birth of quantum mechanics, to
clarify the procedures of quantum mechanics. QC and QIS make wide use of Dirac notation.

Try It 3.1

Write out by hand the state symbols given in Bob’s previous paragraph. This exercise will
get you used to writing the symbols and using them as containers. Make up some binary
states of your own (for example, win-lose, dead-alive, or score-no-score) and write the
corresponding state symbols.

ALICE: Anticipating the terminology used in quantum computing, we might call these clas-
sical states Cbits (C for classical). Cbit is pronounced see-bit. The 0s and 1s are called classical
bits, or just bits; most people use the latter term.
CARDY: But what happens if there are more than two possible states? I would love to be
able to say that my computer has more states than your computer!
ALICE: Indeed, we could develop computational systems with more than two states, but
those are hardly ever used. We have already seen that we can use clusters of bits to represent
numbers, alphabetical symbols, and so on. So, binary systems and bits are all we will ever need
to understand commonly used computers.

3.3 State Vectors

BOB: In quantum computing, these state symbols are called “state vectors” because they are
given mathematical properties that are similar to the mathematics of vector quantities like
velocity, force, and acceleration, represented pictorially by arrows that point in a particular
direction. The length of the vector indicates the “strength” of the quantity. You’ve probably
seen vectors on weather maps, where the arrows (vectors) are used to indicate wind direction
and speed.
CARDY: But what does it mean to say that a computing state vector points in a certain
direction? Are you trying to say that in my computer the state vectors point say north or east?
BOB: Neat idea, but the “directions” for state vectors are in most cases more abstract. In fact,
the state vectors “live” in an abstract space called “state space” whose “directions” have nothing
 STATE VECTORS 19

Vhigh
state space

Vlow

Fig. 3.1 A state space diagram for a two-state system. |Vlow ⟩ and Vhigh are represented by the “vectors” along the two
perpendicular axes in state space.

to do with east or north or up or down in the physical world. The role of east or north is played
by the vectors representing “basis states,” which we introduce in the next chapter. Though this
abstract space may sound like a crazy idea, it is crazy enough to be useful. In fact, the usual
mathematics of quantum theory is entirely a “state space” formalism.
Since this state space idea is weird, I find it helpful to draw pictures. These pictures are
widely used in quantum mechanics and some aspects of quantum computing.
Let’s see how this works for the two states |Vlow ⟩ and |Vhigh ⟩. In Figure 3.1, I put the state
vector |Vlow ⟩ along the horizontal axis and |Vhigh ⟩ along the vertical axis. This is an arbitrary
choice (like the usual choice of x along the horizontal direction and y along the vertical direc-
tion in graphs of mathematical functions). You don’t have to do it this way, but most people
in the field do. Reversing the roles of x and y in a graph will drive your friends nuts even
though it is perfectly legitimate. All that is important, though, is that the two state vectors are
perpendicular to each other.
CARDY: One of my math teachers said that perpendicular vectors are orthogonal. Is that
the same as perpendicular?
ALICE: Yes, that’s the same, but saying “orthogonal” gets you extra points in mathematics.
In practical terms, orthogonal means that if the computer wire is in one Cbit state, then it can’t
be in the other state. They are mutually exclusive. If the wire is in the |Vlow ⟩ state, it cannot be
in the |Vhigh ⟩ state, and vice versa. So, for a two-state classical computing system, the actual
states of a wire could be represented by arrows along either the horizontal axis or the vertical
axis in state space.
In Figure 3.2, the red arrow in state space represents the state of a particular wire in a clas-
sical computer. When computations are being carried out, the wire will switch back and forth
between those two states. If the system were described by a state with a “tilted” state vector
pointing in some direction other than horizontal or vertical in Figure 3.2, the vector would
quickly move to be either horizontal or vertical in the state space diagram. Of course, wires
need to switch from one state to another as the computer carries out operations, but the cir-
cuitry is timed so the other parts of the computer “look” at the wires only after the wires have
settled into the appropriate state. If the timing is not set correctly, all sorts of bad things can
happen to the computer’s calculations.
CARDY: What does the length of an arrow mean for a state vector? In regular space, I can
imagine measuring lengths with rulers, or if I am talking about the wind speed at a particular
location and associating that speed—so many miles per hour or meters per second—with the
length of the wind vector. But I can’t see how that would work in state space.
20 TRADITIONAL BITS IN NEW CLOTHING

Vhigh state space

Vhigh

Vlow Vlow

Fig. 3.2 On the left, the state of a traditional computer wire in the Vhigh state is represented by the vertical red arrow
(vector) in state space. On the right, the wire is in the Vlow state.

ALICE: Good question. The length of a state vector plays no role in classical computing, but
once we get into quantum computing, we’ll see that it is important to associate a “length” with
a state vector.
State vector lengths lead to another helpful representation of computing states. Assume for
the moment that the state vectors are one unit long. Let’s also use the horizontal axis in the
state space diagram as the x axis in typical mathematical graph; the vertical axis corresponds
to y.
We draw the state space vectors so that their tails are at x = 0 and y = 0. We can then ask:
What are the (x,y) coordinates of the tips of the arrows? For example, the state vector |Vhigh ⟩
has its tip at x = 0 and y = 1 in Figure 3.2.
CARDY: I get it. Then for the |Vlow ⟩ vector in Figure 3.2, the tip is at x = 1 and y = 0.
ALICE: Exactly right. We may group those tip coordinates in columns:
   
xtip 0
|Vhigh ⟩ ⇒ =
ytip 1
(3.1)
   
xtip 1
|Vlow ⟩ ⇒ = .
ytip 0

The x coordinate of the tip is listed at the top of the column and the y coordinate at the bottom.
The large parenthesis symbols are called “column vectors.” They are akin to the way you may
have labeled xy coordinates of a point in a graph as (x, y).
CARDY: What do you mean by the arrow?
ALICE: The arrow ⇒ will be used to mean “is mathematically represented by.” The termi-
nology reminds us that a Dirac state symbol is not the same as a column vector. In fact, a state
vector can be represented by many different column vectors depending on how you orient
your x and y axes in the diagram.
By the way, some authors use square brackets rather than parentheses. In that case, Eq. (3.1)
would look like
 
0
|Vhigh ⟩ ⇔
1
(3.2)
 
1
|Vlow ⟩ ⇔ .
0
 STATE VECTORS 21

CARDY: I get it! The 1s are bits equal to 1 and the 0s are bits equal to 0.
ALICE: Sorry, Cardy. Not quite right. We haven’t yet made any connection to the bits 1
and 0. Let’s see how that connection works out. As we talked about in Chapter 2, in classical
computing we usually associate Vhigh with the bit value 1 and Vlow with the bit value 0. So,
following that choice, we associate the state vector |Vhigh ⟩ with the bit 1 and the state vector
|Vlow ⟩ with the bit 0. It is customary to write this association as

|Vhigh ⟩ ⇒ 1 and |Vlow ⟩ ⇒ 0. (3.3)

CARDY: OK, I think I see what is going on, but I need to mull this over. I’m getting confused
about what is a number, what is a coordinate, and what is a label.
BOB: I agree that the notation is a bit confusing (ha ha!). The way Alice and I have worked
this out is to assume that what is inside the state vector “container” is always a label—just a
name.
ALICE: Another piece of terminology will turn out to be important for quantum computing:
basis states. In traditional computing, the basis states are just |Vlow ⟩ and |Vhigh ⟩ (the voltage
basis) or |F alse⟩ and |T rue⟩ (the True/False basis) or |0⟩ and |1⟩ (the classical bit basis). In
all three cases, the basis state vectors point along the horizontal and vertical axes in Figure 3.1.
The physical devices in traditional computing are constructed so that only the basis states
actually occur. As we mentioned before, there are rapid switches from one to the other, but the
computer is constructed to ignore those switching periods. In the next chapter, we will find
that the notion of basis states is more complicated for quantum states than for classical states.
For quantum states, we will see in Chapter 4 that the state need not lie along one of the basis
axes. It can lie in a combination or superposition of the states. Drawing such a state vector is
just like drawing any other vector based on coordinates. Start with the tail at the origin (x = 0
and y = 0). The head will be at the coordinates given by  the
 column vector entries. For example,
3
Figure 3.3 shows the state space vector for the state with the Vlow and Vhigh basis states.
1
This is not an allowed state for a classical computer.
Most of the time we want to be more general and not have to worry about the particular
physical construction of the traditional computer. Then we use the vectors |0⟩ and |1⟩, the
so-called computational basis states. In our way of talking about state vectors, the “0” and “1”

Vhigh state space

Vlow

Fig. 3.3 A state space diagram with Vlow and Vhigh basis states. The long arrow represents a state vector 3 |Vlow ⟩ + Vhigh .
22 TRADITIONAL BITS IN NEW CLOTHING

inside the state vector containers are just the names of the states. But given the usual conven-
tions of computer science, we may associate the state labels with the binary numbers 0 and 1.
Generally, we don’t need to worry about the distinction between labels and numbers. However,
it would be a big error to write 0.5 |1⟩ = |0.5⟩ or |1⟩ + |1⟩ = |2⟩.
Let’s pause and summarize what we have done. We’ve looked at three representations of the
states of components (wires) in a classical computer:

1. Abstract states: for example, |T rue⟩ or |1⟩ or |Vhigh ⟩.

2. State space vectors: arrow-like entities that “live” in the abstract state space.
3. Column vectors: a vertical array of numerical values giving the coordinates of the tips of
the state vectors, assuming that the tails are at x = 0 and y = 0 in state space.

In almost every area of science, math, computer science, and engineering, a critical professional
skill is being fluent in translating among different representations of concepts. We will get more
fluent in those translations once we get into qubits and quantum state vectors in Chapter 4.

Try It 3.2
         
1 2 0.5 0.2 −1
For the following column vectors , draw the
1 1 0.5 0.5 1
corresponding state space vectors.

3.4 Gates as Matrices

BOB: We saw in Chapter 2 that computation can be carried out by using logic gates to act on
the Cbits carried by the wires in the computer’s electrical circuits. We described the results of
those operations using logic tables (or truth tables).
There is another neat way of representing what gates do to classical computing bits. To il-
lustrate this, let’s consider the NOT gate. Remember that a NOT gate changes a bit 0 into a bit
1 and a bit 1 into a bit 0. How would we write those results in state vector language?
CARDY: I would write something like

NOT |1⟩ = |0⟩

(3.4)
NOT |0⟩ = |1⟩.

Is that correct?
ALICE: Yes. We read these left to right: In the first line of Eq. (3.4), the NOT operates on
the symbolic state vector |1⟩ to produce the symbolic state vector |0⟩. In the second line, NOT
acts on |0⟩ to produce |1⟩.
 GATES AS MATRICES 23

In terms of column vectors, the representation in Eq. (3.4) looks like

   
1 0
(NOT) =
0 1
(3.5)
   
0 1
(NOT) = .
1 0

CARDY: I see that NOT switches between the two column vectors, like it did between True
and False or 0 and 1. I am assuming the matrices with the 0s and 1s represent the computational
basis?
BOB: That’s right. So, the question is: What is the mathematical operation indicated by
(NOT) that makes this work; the 1s change to 0s and vice versa? The answer is an array of 1s
and 0s, which when multiplied times the column vectors gives the result stated in Eq. (3.5).
Here is what the array looks like:
    
0 1 1 0
= . (3.6)
1 0 0 1

ALICE: The array is called a two-by-two matrix: “two-by-two” because it has two rows and
two columns, and “matrix” because it is an array of numbers (or symbols) that has certain
mathematical properties. For now, we just need to know what happens when you multiply a
column vector by a matrix. The general multiplication rule is
    
a b e ae + bf
= . (3.7)
c d f ce + df

One way to remember this rule is that multiplying the array times the column vector gives an-
other column vector. The top element of the resulting column vector is the sum of the products
of the elements in the top row of the array times the corresponding elements in the column
vector. The bottom element of resulting column vector is the sum of the products of the bottom
row elements of the array times the corresponding column vector elements.
CARDY: Whew! That is rather weird. But it does seem to work for the NOT array.

Try It 3.3

Check that Cardy is right.

CARDY: Is that matrix array the same as The Matrix in the movie?
ALICE. No, but I hear from a friend who teaches math that students have been asking that
question in linear algebra classes every year since the movie came out.
We have learned that the gate operations introduced in Chapter 2 are equivalent to a matrix
multiplying the corresponding column vector. I remind you that this is an unusual way of
24 TRADITIONAL BITS IN NEW CLOTHING

talking about classical computing, but it is at the heart of quantum computing, which we will
take up in Chapter 4.

Try It 3.4

Use the multiplication rule in Eq. (3.7) to check the following results:
              
0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1
= = = .
1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1

CHAPTER SUMMARY

This chapter has introduced three state representations which we will be using through-
out the remainder of this book. This summary can serve as a quick reference guide to that
notation.

• In classical computing, the “state” of a wire can be at a low or a high voltage and these
states can be represented by state vectors |Vlow ⟩ and Vhigh . In quantum computing, you
will see similar use of states.
• Basis state vectors are orthogonal to each other. This has important mathematical ramifi-
cations for quantum computing algorithms.
• A state vector can be represented by
(1) an arrow in state space,
(2) a column vector of the x, y coordinates of the tip of the state arrow in state
space, or
(3) the Dirac state |⟩ notation.

• These states live in an abstract state space, whose directions do not represent any physical
space direction such as left, right, east, or west. Instead, the basis state vectors represent
the mutually exclusive orthogonal states, which could be labeled as True/False, high and
low voltage, or other binary properties.
• A logic gate operation can be represented by a matrix multiplying column vectors or as
symbolic operations acting on states in the |⟩ notation.

FURTHER READING

N. David Mermin, Quantum Computer Science: An Introduction (Cambridge University

Press, Cambridge, 2007). Chapter 1 uses Dirac notation to describe classical computing
states.
The Khan Academy has some nice short videos and articles about matrices: https://www.
khanacademy.org.
“Matrix (mathematics),” Wikipedia. Provides more information about matrices and column
vectors.
 4 Qubits and Quantum States

L’État, c’est moi (I am the State).

Attributed to King Louis XIV

4.1 What Is a Qubit?

ALICE: This a momentous occasion; we are now ready to tackle the formal description of
quantum states—the essential ingredient of quantum computing.
BOB: Cardy, you should be sure to ask questions as we go along. But before Alice gets
into the details of quantum states, I want to point out that there are two ways to think about
quantum computing: First, building computers out of quantum objects. Examples of such ob-
jects are polarized photons, trapped ions, electrons trapped in “vacancies” in materials (for
example, in diamonds), or superconducting electrical circuits. To understand the physics of
those objects requires quantum mechanics.
The second way is developing quantum computing algorithms that make use of the mathe-
matics of quantum mechanics. In either case, we will need to understand how the states of such
objects are described in quantum mechanics, how we can manipulate those states to carry out
computational tasks, and how using measurements of the objects tells us about the quantum
states.
ALICE: We will use the term “qubit” (an abbreviation of “quantum bit”) to mean any of
these objects that have a physical property with just two possible values. Sometimes the two
values arise naturally. For example, the so-called spin of an electron, neutron, or proton has
just two possible values: the spin component along a particular spatial direction can be either
“up” or “down.”
In other cases, the quantum system is more complex: an atom or ion made up of protons,
neutrons, and electrons, or a superconducting device built from millions or billions of atoms.
In those cases, we manipulate the quantum system, so that only two possible values of some
property (such as energy) are relevant. The key element in both cases is that there are only two
possible quantum states: one associated with one value of the property and the other state with
the other value.
CARDY: So, quantum computing is just like classical computing, but with qubits instead of
classical bits?
ALICE: Yes. And no. We will see that there are some similarities, but also some funda-
mental differences. Those differences allow quantum computers to do things that are simply
impossible for classical computers.
Quantum Computing: From Alice to Bob. Alice Flarend and Bob Hilborn, Oxford University Press.
© Alice Flarend and Robert C. Hilborn (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192857972.003.0004
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